YONDER BREAKS

You may have seen my last post about my first book, All Roads Lead to Dockweiler , that's out now. (If not, please go check it out !) Well, if you've purchased the book, you've seen that it comes with a QR code for a free downloaded of my first full-length album, Golden Coast Summertime . But I also wanted to release something to celebrate the book launch, as well as a build up to the eventual public release of the Golden Coast Summertime LP, and so the week that the book came out I also released the  Sunrise at Sunset EP !  This one comes with five songs, three of which are from the upcoming album, one is a remixed version off of the album, and the last is a demo I did with my good friend Alex Barker way back in 2015. Starting off is an acoustic version of " More Beautiful ," which is the first song I ever wrote for my wife way back in 2009. Here is the official music video for the original video: Next up is " Luna ," a song I wrote about the moon th...

I have a little series of videos titled Songs Written and Recorded in Cars . I actually write a majority of my songs in cars (or at least have done so the past five or six years), as the solace of the road has provided ample room for thought and melody to sweep through. Shooting these videos has been a bit of a slow process though. The song I'm featuring here, "Clouds," is probably the first song I ever wrote in a car. I had just taken my dad to the airport, and was feeling noticeably sad and introspective. The same day, my girlfriend at the time was going to drive home for the summer, and so I remarked at the idea of "losing" two loved ones in one day, even if just for a time. As I was driving, however, I noticed dark storm clouds that lined the sky, but also the leftover moonlight and pending sunrise, working their way through and above as morning hit. Sunrises are beautiful, but even more so when there are clouds present, which sparked the idea of what ma...

It's been a hard year. A rude awakening of sorts. A lot of work, not much pay. No time. Out of balance. Things are changing, but one of the things I have noticed this year is that this is a common story. I work with folks who devote hours and hours to multiple jobs, and still  struggle to make ends meet. It would be one thing if they were choosing this life in order to afford an ultra cool loft and a Maserati, but most of these people are just feeding their families and paying off a modest mortgage. I suppose there are always ways to cut back, but outside of moving to Costa Rica and living on a farm, I'm not sure what else to do about it. Photo by Don C. So one day I'm standing on the ramp at the airport (one of my jobs) and watching a plane get ready to take off. By my side are these same men and women that are barely scraping by. In front of me is a sleek travel tool, man's invention. To operate it takes thousands of guys like us, wearing our hands and backs d...

I was driving to work the other morning and saw a beautiful sunrise over downtown Charleston. The city is known as the Holy City because of all the church steeples that line our modest skyline. As the sun crept up that morning, it silhouetted one of those famous churches, shining through the windows of the bell tower. It was beautiful, that silhouetted church, but it sparked an idea -- is this a picture of the state of the church right now? Here we have an old fashioned building, the way churches used to be designed -- huge steeple that stretched into the sky with a cross on top, reminding all who see where their hope comes from, their safety and their salvation. But churches aren't designed that way anymore, and church isn't performed the way it was back then either. The liturgy of the past is widely gone, and the ornate buildings of old have been replaced by more practical warehouses and shopping centers. But in the silhouette of these buildings, what do we see? The  line ...